In This Article:

Homepage Creator

In This Article:

The homepage text tab configures the actual text that appears on your site's front page. This text, coordinated with the photo(s) you set in the Photos tab and your Splash Page help you set up the first impression you'll give to many constituents and potential supporters.

Headline

The homepage's Headline will appear as a banner headline atop the page (in h2 HTML style).

MessageSet whatever message you want for your site's homepage: a welcome message, a description of your mission, a call to action, or whatever suits you best. This field appears on the signup page after the Headline, and accepts HTML styling.

Photos

Optionally (but strongly recommended), a rotating display of one or more images can sit atop the homepage, preceding the Homepage Text message. This tab lets you set up the image(s) to use for that display.

Adding a photo to your homepage

Each of the photos you include on your homepage consists simply of an image that exists online somewhere (see below if you need help uploading an image that is not yet online), plus a descriptive caption text:Enlarge.

To add an image to your homepage, simply select the box under "Photo 1", "Photo 2", or whatever the first available unused photo slot happens to be.

Placing your cursor in the "photo" box automatically calls up Salsa's photo library selector, enabling you to click on an image already in your Salsa library:Enlarge.

If you want to use an image hosted elsewhere online, simply close the selector box and paste in a the full url of an image (e.g., http://www.mysite.org/image.jpg).

Caution: Salsa cannot assure available bandwidth for images not hosted on its servers. It is also very strongly recommended that you control the image you link to; using urls from unaffiliated third parties offers them the opportunity to do mischief by swapping the image with something you might not want on your homepage.

Once your image has been selected, optionally add descriptive text. (If you think a poignant shot speaks for itself, you may prefer to skip this step.)

To include multiple images, simply populate the same boxes for additional photo "slots"

Voila! Your homepage now includes one or more pitch-perfect images:Enlarge.

Splash page edit

A splash page is "a sort of pre-front page home page", a promotional interface given to your homepage visitor before sending him or her on to your site.

Splash pages have become widely used by political campaigns and advocacy organizations to capture a maximum number of list signups and donations, both during high-traffic events and everyday operation of the site. This tab helps you configure a splash page that will drive signups and/or donations when users visit your homepage:Enlarge.

The configuration choices you make in the Splash Page tab do not affect your homepage text or images from the preceding tab. The splash page is a self-contained unit that does not have reference to your homepage, so make sure your description stands on its own.

Show Splash Page

Not every user will see the splash page every time s/he visits. Choose from the picklist whether to show the splash page once per visit (the most aggressive), once per day, once per week, or once per month. (These frequencies are defined by stored cookies, so a user who erases cookies might see the page with a different frequency.)

Only one frequency can operate at any given time. However, you might wish to vary the setting under changing circumstances: for instance, a "once per week" setting might be your routine comfort level, but it might be worth upping it to "once per visit" or "once per day" when a high-profile media event is driving unusual levels of traffic and you suspect many of them to be new visitors who ought to be captured on your list.

Headline

The headline of the splash page will appear as a banner headline atop the page.

Splash Page Photo

Placing your cursor in the "photo" box automatically calls up Salsa's photo library selector, enabling you to click on an image already in your Salsa library (see screenshots above). If you want to use an image hosted elsewhere online, simply close the selector box and paste in a the full url of an image (e.g., http://www.mysite.org/image.jpg).

Caution: Salsa cannot assure available bandwidth for images not hosted on its servers. It is also very strongly recommended that you control the image you link to; using urls from unaffiliated third parties offers them the opportunity to do mischief by swapping the image with something you might not want on your homepage.

Page Text

The main text of the splash page. Though you can make this text as long as you like, a splash page should be succinct and action-oriented: you have only seconds to convert the reader, so make a strong ask.

Signup Form Enabled

If checked, the splash page will include a signup form enabling the visitor to "convert" by joining your list. While list signups are always valuable, your objectives may sometimes dictate not enabling this form in order to go all-out for donation conversion.

Donate Page

The splash page will always contain a "donate" link inviting the visitor to contribute. Use the "Donate Page" picklist here to choose which of your Salsa donation pages will be linked by that button.